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Bali fire, 22 January 2026 Bali

Out · last detection 3 Feb 2026, 13:25 UTC

The fire started on 22 January 2026 in Bali, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,052 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 34 in Nigeria in 2026, of 266.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bali · 2026Toungo · 2025Bali · 2025Toungo · 2026

Burnt area
7,052ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
22 Jan 2026 – 3 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
22 Jan
2026
Heat detections
239
in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
93MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jan3 Feb
3 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jan 2026 · 0 MW · 1 24 Jan 2026 · 177 MW · 35 25 Jan 2026 · 40 MW · 10 26 Jan 2026 · 54 MW · 15 27 Jan 2026 · 146 MW · 30 28 Jan 2026 · 118 MW · 25 29 Jan 2026 · 231 MW · 28 30 Jan 2026 · 76 MW · 15 31 Jan 2026 · 156 MW · 21 1 Feb 2026 · 112 MW · 4 2 Feb 2026 · 5 MW · 2 3 Feb 2026 · 3 MW · 1
22 Jan 25 Jan 27 Jan 29 Jan 31 Jan 2 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

40°high
36km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 102 ha in 2016, 563 ha in 2021, 764 ha in 2023, 1,113 ha in 2024, 815 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,406 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Bali where it started
    7,102 ha reached on 15 Jan
    0.7 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.35 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Jan 35.4 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Jan 37.3 °C 18 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jan 37.4 °C 18 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jan 37.4 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jan 37.1 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Jan 36.2 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jan 36.4 °C 16 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jan 38.2 °C 17 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
30 Jan 35.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Jan 37.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
1 Feb 37.3 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Feb 40.2 °C 12 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Feb 39.3 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Feb after 37.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Feb after 39.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Feb after 37.1 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Feb after 37.1 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Feb after 38.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Feb after 37.9 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Feb after 37.6 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Feb after 36.7 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Feb after 36.1 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Feb after 38.2 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 15 Jan 2026
After · 10 Feb 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 29 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 105 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 89: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak105 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10333 µg/m³
Optical depth0.74
202122232425262728293031123456
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 239Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bali fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 January 2026 and 3 February 2026: 13 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,052 hectares (70.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bali (7,102 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 239 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.